Out Like A Lion
by QuietLittleVoices
Summary: You were fifteen when you realized you might very well be in love with him. ((Human AU, Dean/Cas))


**A/N: **I've had this sitting on my laptop for a long while. Named for the song by Whitehorse. Please tell me what you think?

Disclaimer: I only own my words, not the characters.

* * *

You've known him since you were kids, playing in mud puddles and catching butterflies. Things were really fucking simple back then.

You were always close; best friends, partners in crime. Never one without the other. When you did something stupid, he'd always take the fall with you and even though everyone knew he'd had nothing to do with it – because Castiel was good and nice and innocent while you were the troublemaker – they'd let him sit with you through your punishment, 'cause they knew it was no use to try and separate you two. He'd just sneak in and find you, as had been proven when they'd tried.

And then you hit high school and he was in all the advanced classes while you were in the normal ones and you never got to see each other during school hours, except at lunch when he wasn't studying. With all the detentions you served and all his studying on top of that, you rarely saw each other at all. It made you sad, but you didn't know what you could do about it.

You were fifteen when you realized you might very well be in love with him.

He was laughing at something stupid you'd said, something you forgot now, and it hit you full force. You loved him, his stupid laugh and his innocence and his obliviousness to social norms and you just loved _him_. But he was happy and who could be happy with you? So you pushed it down and pushed it down until you could smile back and pretend it wasn't killing you a little bit inside every time you saw him.

* * *

Throughout high school you date girls and guys who are very much _not him_ and each one of them ends it with you because they _know_. And they can't compete with him. They're all great in their own right, and will one day make someone very happy, but that day isn't today and that someone isn't you. But they know who The One for you is, whether or not your The One for him, and about half of them tell you to just grab him one day and kiss him to within an inch of his life. It's probably only because they're jealous of the fact that you so obviously aren't in love with them and are seeing something that isn't there, but they seem to think that would actually go over well. You, however, know Cas better than anyone and know that you're just not right for him. And if the people who honestly didn't know you that well could tell how you felt, then he probably did, too, and was just choosing not to act on that knowledge because he didn't feel the same way.

And then he's going away to university and your friends are telling you that this here is your last chance to tell him. But you don't, because you can't, and you see him off at the airport with a smile on your face. You studiously pretend not to see his eyes tearing up, and he does the same for you, as you hug tightly one last time before he leaves.

"I'll miss you," he says quietly into your ear.

"I'll miss you, too," you echo before letting him go, and he doesn't know how much more it means than those simple four words. It means 'I need you', 'I love you', 'please stay', and a million other things that you just can't say – can barely even think.

And then he's gone.

* * *

His first semester was hard on you. Without him, you were all alone. Sure, you had Sam, but Sam was a teenager and 'too cool' to hang out with his older, mechanic brother. And anyway, Sam wasn't Cas. He didn't fill the right gaps left in your life.

But you didn't realize how much you missed him until he came home for Thanksgiving, and afterwards everything was near impossible for you. Without him there, there wasn't much of a point to your days. And it was a really chick-flick thing to say, but it was true. You just kind of... lost interest when he wasn't there.

That's what lead to the drunken voicemail you left on his cell at four AM a week after Thanksgiving. You confessed _everything_ in that call – how much you needed him, how much you loved him. And he didn't call back, didn't say a thing about it next time he called you on your weekly conversations, and so you figured well, that was it. He knew and he didn't feel the same.

* * *

Except this was your life and things were never that simple because a month after Thanksgiving comes Christmas and Cas is home again, for however short a time it may be, and you can't bear to look at him but you can feel his eyes on you at all times.

And he's staying at your apartment, like he always does, and you both get more than a little drunk on something that by the end of the night (or beginning of the morning, depending on your viewpoint) is a lot more rum than it is eggnog. And you talked, like you did when you were kids.

"I mean to call you, you know," Cas admits, laying stretched out on your couch. "But I knew you weren't serious," he continues. "Drunk and lonely, yeah, but not serious. I felt so dumb..." he trails off and hiccups a laugh. "I've loved you since we were kids, ya know? Hurt so much, seein' you with all those people." He shrugs, though it's slightly awkward due to the angle. "S'okay, though; I get it. I'm 'weird'."

You're shocked, listening to his words, and you sit up so that your faces are near each other. You lean in and grab the back of his head, pulling him up slightly so that you can rest your foreheads together. "That long?" you breath, like you don't wanna break the moment, but really it's 'cause you've forgotten how to speak properly.

Cas just nods in response, so you pull him in closer and press your lips together, and it feels so good. Soft and warm, and like everything you thought it would. He tastes like alcohol but smells like a long forgotten dream, and you clamber up onto the couch with him to more easily continue kissing. But he pushes you away slightly and looks up at you with sad eyes.

"I don't need your pity, Dean," he tells you quietly, and you want to cry.

Instead of doing that, though, you close the distance again, nipping lightly at his bottom lip and his head arches towards you in response, but you pull just our of range. "I love you," you tell him seriously, looking right into his eyes like he's all you have left, like he's all there is in the world, and that's kinda true. At least, lately.

And when he smiles at you, his eyes lit up so bright you swear you almost go blind and you have to look away because you can't stand the pure contentment – the unadulterated, unconditional love – shining out at you. You know more than anyone that you don't deserve it, but you're selfish and you have the opportunity so when he starts leaning up to kiss you again you meet him half way.

* * *

When you wake up on the twenty-sixth of December you're head is killing you and you're freezing cold and you are most definitely not alone in your bed. You groan and rub your eyes, trying to untangle yourself from your bed mate without opening your eyes, and you mostly succeed because you're sitting on the edge of the bed and stretching when you do open them, and then you look back and your brain short circuits – all rational thought becomes impossible because _holy shit, Cas is naked in your bed_.

And some crazy part of your mind tells you that you're loosing it, or that you've died and this is heaven, and another, smaller, part is telling you just how cute Cas looks with sex hair and tangled up in your sheets.

The majority of you wins and you get out of bed, slip on a pair of boxers, and make coffee. You half expect to go back in your room and find it empty, that the sight you saw was just the remnant of a dream, but a sleepy-eyed Cas walks into the kitchen not fifteen minutes after you, wearing a pair of your pyjama pants slung low on his hips and you want to dig your fingers into his hipbones and press marks into the, with your mouth and with your hands.

"Did any of that mean anything?" he asks gravely, in his way, as you hand him coffee without a word.

You shrug and feel yourself turn defensive, something you rarely had to be around him. "If you want to forget it, it can never have happened."

He looks at you steadily as he says, "And if I don't?"

You fight the grin threatening to form on your face, and keep your features blank and schooled. "Well, then it can happen again. And again."

There's a quiet smile on his features when you say that. "I meant what I said last night," he continues. "At least, what I can remember clearly. I do love you. And it's okay if you don't."

You put your coffee down – it was growing cold, anyway – and walk over to him, but you're smart enough to leave his cup in his hands because you know how he gets in the mornings. You press a kiss against his mouth and taste your shitty corner store blend. "I love you."

And you begin to think that maybe good things to happen to you. Maybe you're a good thing.


End file.
